Russia
Name
| Official name | Russian Federation — Rossiyskaya Federatsiya (Российская Федерация); Russia — Rossiya — equal in law |
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| Former names | The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (1917–91), the largest of the fifteen of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922–91); the Russian Republic of 1917; the Russian Empire (1721–1917) of the Romanovs; the Tsardom of Russia (1547–1721); the Grand Duchy of Moscow (1283–1547) and the Vladimir-Suzdal of the Mongol yoke; Kievan Rus' (882–1240); the Novgorod of Rurik of 862; "Muscovy" of the Western maps |
| Demonym | Russian — russkiy for the ethnic Russian and rossiyanin for the citizen of any people, the distinction the language keeps and English cannot |
| Meaning of the name | From the Rus' — the Varangians of Rurik, the Scandinavian traders and warriors of the 800s whom the Finns called Ruotsi, "the rowers," and the Slavs and the Greeks Rus' and Rhos, the name of the state of Kyiv and Novgorod; "Rossiya" the Byzantine Greek form Ivan III and the Muscovite scribes adopted in the 1400s, made official by Peter's Empire of 1721; the "Russian" of the land, the language and the church |
| Motto | None official — "God is with us," the Empire's; "Workers of the world, unite!" the Union's; the "Rossiya — svyashchennaya nasha derzhava," "Russia, our sacred state," of the anthem |
Quick facts
| Capital | Moscow — Moskva — the capital of the grand dukes and the tsars to 1712 and of the state since 12 March 1918; about 13 million in the city and 21 million in the metropolis, the largest city of Europe |
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| Largest cities | Moscow; Saint Petersburg, about 5.6 million, the imperial capital of 1712–1918, the Leningrad of the siege and Putin's city; Novosibirsk, about 1.6 million, the capital of Siberia and the Akademgorodok; Yekaterinburg of the Urals and the Romanovs' end; Kazan of the Tatars; Nizhny Novgorod of the Volga fair; Chelyabinsk; Krasnoyarsk on the Yenisei; Samara; Ufa of the Bashkirs; Rostov-on-Don of the south; Omsk; Krasnodar; Voronezh; Perm; Volgograd, the Stalingrad of 1943; Vladivostok on the Pacific; Sevastopol and Simferopol of the Crimea Moscow counts and the world does not; Grozny of Chechnya rebuilt |
| Official language | Russian — the East Slavic language of the Cyrillic alphabet, the mother tongue of 85% and the language of the state, the schools and the army, the language of Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Bulgakov, Solzhenitsyn and the five Nobels, the second language of the former Union of 250 million speakers; the 35 co-official languages of the republics — Tatar of 5 million, Chechen, Bashkir, Chuvash, Avar and the Dagestani dozen, Yakut, Buryat, Tuvan, Ossetian, Ingush, Kabardian, Udmurt, Mari, Komi, Kalmyk and the rest of the 100 languages of the census, the 25 endangered; the English the elite and the young learned; Ukrainian by the millions of the annexed lands the schools now teach Russian |
| Currency | Russian ruble — RUB, ₽; 100 kopeks; the oldest currency name of Europe; redenominated 1 January 1998; about 80 to the U.S. dollar |
| Time zones | Eleven — from Kaliningrad Time, UTC+2, through Moscow Time, UTC+3, the legal time of the west, to Kamchatka Time, UTC+12; no summer time since 2014 |
| Calling code | +7 — shared with Kazakhstan |
| Internet domain | .ru, .рф and the Soviet .su still in use |
| ISO 3166 codes | RU · RUS · 643 |
| Vehicle registration code | RUS |
| Driving side | Right — the right-hand-drive Japanese imports of the Far East |
| Electricity | 230 V, 50 Hz; plug types C and F |
| Independence | 12 June 1990, the declaration of state sovereignty of the Russian republic by its Congress of People's Deputies, the Russia Day; 25 December 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved, Gorbachev's resignation and the flag lowered from the Kremlin, the Federation the successor state; the state of 862, 1547 and 1721 of the reckonings |
| National days | 12 June, Russia Day, the sovereignty of 1990; 9 May, Victory Day, the parade of Red Square and the "Immortal Regiment" of the photographs, the holiday of the state; 4 November, National Unity Day, for the expulsion of the Poles of 1612, since 2005 in place of the 7 November of the Revolution; 23 February, Defender of the Fatherland Day; 8 March, Women's Day; 1 May; 1 to 8 January of the New Year holidays and the Orthodox Christmas of 7 January; 22 August, the Flag Day; 12 April, Cosmonautics Day |
| Constitution | 12 December 1993 — the Constitution of the Russian Federation, adopted by the referendum of that day with 58% on a turnout of 55% two months after Yeltsin's tanks shelled the parliament, the charter of the presidential republic: the president elected for six years since 2012, the commander in chief who names the prime minister, dissolves the Duma and rules by decree, the Federal Assembly of the State Duma of 450 and the Federation Council, the Constitutional Court, the 85 subjects of 1993; the amendments of 2020 approved by the vote of 25 June to 1 July 2020 with 78% — the "zeroing" of Putin's terms that lets him run in 2030, the primacy of the Constitution over the international law, the marriage of a man and a woman, the "faith in God," the State Council; the amendments of 2022 that wrote the four annexed regions in; the constitution the exiles call a decoration |
| Population | 147,182,123 at the census of 2021 with Crimea; about 146 million (Rosstat, 2026 est.) within the borders of 2014 and about 145 million by the estimates that exclude Crimea; the ninth-most populous; falling by half a million a year |
| Area | 17,098,242 km² (6,601,665 sq mi) — land 16,377,742 km², water 720,500 km²; the largest country of the world, 11% of the land surface, eleven time zones; the European part 3.96 million km² west of the Urals; Crimea and the four regions of 2022 counted by Moscow and not here |
Flag & national symbols
| National flag | Three horizontal bands of white, blue and red — the tricolor Peter the Great took from the Dutch flag he saw on the ships of Archangel and the Oryol of 1668 and flew on his own ship in 1693, the flag of the merchant fleet of 1705, the "Pan-Slavic colors" the Serbs, the Czechs and the Slovaks copied, the state flag by the decree of 1896 for Nicholas II's coronation, replaced by the red banner of the Soviets in 1918 and raised again by the crowds who beat the coup of August 1991, restored by the Supreme Soviet on 22 August 1991, the Flag Day, and fixed at two by three by the law of 1993 and of 2000; the white for the nobility and the frankness, the blue for the honesty and the fidelity, the red for the courage and the blood by the readings the state prefers, the Virgin's blue and the Muscovite red by the older; the "imperial" black-yellow-white of the nationalists beside it.Flag of Russia |
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| Coat of arms | A golden double-headed eagle on a red shield, the three crowns of Peter above its heads, the scepter and the orb in its talons and Saint George slaying the dragon on the red shield at its breast — the eagle Ivan III took from Byzantium with his marriage to Sophia Palaiologina and put on his seal of 1497, the Third Rome's claim, the arms of the Empire of 1857 reworked by the artist Yevgeny Ukhnalyov, restored by the decree of 30 November 1993 and the law of 25 December 2000; the hammer and sickle of the Soviet arms of 1923 between |
| National anthem | The "State Anthem of the Russian Federation" — the music Alexander Alexandrov wrote for the "Hymn of the Soviet Union" of 1944 and the words Sergey Mikhalkov wrote for the third time, "Rossiya — svyashchennaya nasha derzhava," "Russia, our sacred state," restored by the law of 25 December 2000 in place of Glinka's wordless "Patriotic Song" of 1990–2000, Putin's first symbolic act, "we do not want to deprive the older generation," and the walkout of Yeltsin; the "God Save the Tsar" of 1833–1917 and the "Internationale" of 1918–44 before |
| National motto | None official |
| National colors | White, blue and red |
| National animal | The bear, the unofficial emblem of the country and the world's cartoon of it, the brown bear of the taiga of the 100,000 and the "Russian bear" of the politics, the mascot Misha of 1980; the double-headed eagle of the arms; the Siberian tiger of the Amur of the 750 the president photographs; the Amur leopard; the polar bear of the Arctic; the sable of the fur that built Siberia; the sturgeon of the caviar; widely cited |
| National flower | The chamomile, the romashka of the meadows, the unofficial flower of the wreaths and the "loves me, loves me not"; the birch, the beryoza of the songs, the national tree of every poem, the white forests of the north; the sunflower of the seeds, the lilac of the May; widely cited |
| National dish | Borscht — the beet soup with the cabbage, the beef and the smetana that Ukraine put on UNESCO's list in 2022 as its own and Russia calls the common table; pelmeni, the meat dumplings of Siberia; blini of the Maslenitsa week with the caviar and the sour cream; shchi of the cabbage, the "shchi and kasha, our food"; the olivier salad of the New Year, the herring under a fur coat, the pirozhki, the beef stroganoff of the Odessa counts, the shashlik of the Caucasus; the black bread, the kvass of the summer, the vodka of the toasts and the tea of the samovar; widely cited |
| National sport | Bandy, the "Russian hockey" of the frozen fields, the national sport by the claim of the federation and the winters of the north; football, the World Cup hosted in 2018 and the quarterfinal, the Euro of 2008's semifinal, Spartak, CSKA and Zenit, the ban of FIFA and UEFA since 28 February 2022; ice hockey of the Red Machine of the Soviet golds, the "Miracle on Ice" lost of 1980, the Olympic gold of 2018 as the "Olympic Athletes from Russia," the KHL, Ovechkin's record of 895 goals of April 2025, the ban of the IIHF; the chess of the world champions from Alekhine to Kramnik and the FIDE flag now; gymnastics, figure skating, the Olympics of Sochi 2014, the doping scandal of the state and the neutral athletes of 2024 and 2026; sambo of the president's youth, the judo; the tennis of Medvedev, Rublev and Mirra Andreeva; the biathlon; widely cited |
| Symbol status | The flag by the law of 25 December 2000; the arms by the decree of 1993 and the law of 2000; the anthem by the law of 2000; the animals, plants, dishes and sports widely cited |
Geography
| Location | Northern Eurasia from the Baltic to the Pacific across eleven time zones — Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland of the Kaliningrad exclave, Belarus and Ukraine to the west, Georgia and Azerbaijan across the Caucasus, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China and North Korea to the south, Japan across the strait of the Kurils and the United States across the Bering Strait, 4 km between the Diomede islands; the Arctic Ocean along the whole north; the Urals dividing Europe and Asia |
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| Land borders | 22,408 km (13,923 mi) with fourteen neighbors, the most of any country with China — Kazakhstan 7,644, the longest continuous land border of the world; China 4,133 on the Amur and the Ussuri of the clashes of 1969 and the treaty of 2004; Mongolia 3,452; Ukraine 1,944 of the war since 2014 and the invasion of 24 February 2022, the Kursk that Ukraine held from 6 August 2024 to the spring of 2025; Belarus 1,312 of the Union State and the missiles; Finland 1,309 of the NATO of 2023 and the fence of the migrants, closed since 2023; Georgia 894 of the war of 2008; Azerbaijan 338; Estonia 324, Latvia 332 and Lithuania 261 of the Baltic front, Poland 210 and Lithuania of the Kaliningrad exclave and the Suwałki Gap; Norway 191 at the Arctic; North Korea 18 on the Tumen of the treaty of 2024 and the 11,000 soldiers sent to Kursk; the maritime lines with Japan of the Kurils of 1945 unsettled and with the United States of 1990 |
| Coastline | 37,653 km (23,396 mi) — the Arctic coast of the Barents, Kara, Laptev, East Siberian and Chukchi seas, the longest Arctic coast of any state, Murmansk ice-free by the Gulf Stream and the Northern Sea Route of the icebreakers; the Baltic of Saint Petersburg, Kaliningrad and Ust-Luga; the Black Sea of Novorossiysk, Sochi and the Crimea of Sevastopol and the fleet the drones sank; the Sea of Azov of the Kerch bridge; the Caspian of Astrakhan and Makhachkala; the Pacific of Vladivostok, the Sea of Okhotsk, Kamchatka and the Kurils; the White Sea of Archangel and the Solovki; the 40,000 km of the count with the islands of Novaya Zemlya, Sakhalin, Wrangel and the Franz Josef Land |
| Highest point | Elbrus, 5,642 m (18,510 ft), in the Caucasus of Kabardino-Balkaria — the highest of Europe |
| Lowest point | The Caspian Sea shore, −28 m (−92 ft) |
| Mean elevation | 600 m (1,969 ft) |
| Rivers | The Volga, 3,531 km, the longest of Europe, from the Valdai hills through Tver, Yaroslavl, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Samara, Saratov and Volgograd to the Caspian at Astrakhan, the "Mother Volga" of the songs, the eleven dams and the sturgeon; the Ob with the Irtysh, 5,410 km, the longest of Russia, of Novosibirsk and the Siberian oil; the Yenisei with the Angara from Baikal, 5,539 km, the largest by flow, of Krasnoyarsk; the Lena, 4,400 km, of Yakutsk and the delta; the Amur, 2,824 km, of the Chinese border and Khabarovsk; the Don of the Cossacks and Rostov, the Ural of the Europe–Asia line, the Kama, the Oka, the Neva of Saint Petersburg, the Moskva, the Dnieper's source, the Kolyma of the camps, the Pechora; the ten of the world's longest three, the rivers that flow north to the ice |
| Lakes | Baikal, 31,722 km², 1,642 m deep, the deepest and the oldest lake of the world of 25 million years, the largest by volume with 23,600 km³, a fifth of the unfrozen fresh water on earth, the nerpa seals and the omul, the World Heritage of 1996 and the pulp mill closed in 2013; the Caspian Sea, 371,000 km², the largest lake, shared with four states, falling; Ladoga, 17,700 km², the largest of Europe, the "Road of Life" of the siege of Leningrad; Onega of Kizhi; the Taymyr of the Arctic; Khanka of the Chinese border; the reservoirs of the Volga of Kuybyshev and Rybinsk, the Bratsk of the Angara, the largest by volume of the world in its day; the Seliger; the two million lakes of the count |
| Terrain | The plains of the East European Plain from the western border to the Urals of the forests and the black earth of the south; the Urals of 2,500 km, the old low range of 1,895 m at Narodnaya that divides the continents, the mines of the tsars and the Soviets; the West Siberian Plain of the largest lowland of the world, the swamps and the oil of Tyumen; the Central Siberian Plateau of the Yenisei to the Lena; the mountains of the south and east, the Altai, the Sayan, the Baikal ranges, the Yablonoi, the Stanovoi, the Verkhoyansk and Chersky of the cold, the Sikhote-Alin of the tigers, Kamchatka of the 160 volcanoes and the 29 active, Klyuchevskaya at 4,750 m the highest of Eurasia's volcanoes; the Caucasus of Elbrus; the tundra of the Arctic coast, the taiga of the largest forest on earth, the steppe of the south; the permafrost under two-thirds of the country and thawing |
| Climate | Continental and severe — the winters of −10°C in Moscow and −40 in Siberia, the record of −67.8°C at Verkhoyansk in 1892 and at Oymyakon in 1933, the coldest inhabited places, the summers of 20°C and the heat of the 2010 that burned the forests around Moscow and killed 55,000; the subarctic of the north, the humid continental of the center, the steppe of the south, the subtropical strip of Sochi, the monsoon of the Far East; the snow of five months; the rain of 500 mm in Moscow and 200 in the Caspian lowland; the warming of the Arctic at three times the world's pace, the permafrost thaw that sinks the towns of Norilsk and Yakutsk and the Norilsk diesel spill of 2020 |
| Natural hazards | Earthquakes and volcanoes of Kamchatka, the Kurils and the Caucasus — the Kamchatka earthquake of 30 July 2025, magnitude 8.8, the strongest since 2011, with the tsunami across the Pacific and no dead, the Neftegorsk of Sakhalin of 1995 with 2,000 dead, the Spitak of 1988 of the Armenian Soviet republic; the wildfires of Siberia of every summer, the 2021 of Yakutia's 18 million hectares, the smoke of the cities; the floods of the spring thaw, the Orsk dam of April 2024 and the Krymsk of 2012; the permafrost collapse; the winter cold and the ice; the Chernobyl of 1986 of the Ukrainian Soviet republic that fell on Bryansk; the disasters of the state — the Kursk submarine of 12 August 2000 with 118 dead, the Nord-Ost theater of October 2002 and the Beslan school of September 2004 with 334 dead, the Crocus City Hall attack of 22 March 2024 with 145 dead by the Islamic State's Khorasan branch, the Kemerovo mall fire of 2018 with 60; the war's drones on the refineries, the airports and the towns of Belgorod, Kursk and Bryansk, the 1,600 of the night of 19–20 September 2026 |
| Natural resources | Everything — natural gas, the largest reserves of the world at 47 trillion cubic meters of the Yamal, the Urengoy and the Shtokman of Gazprom, the second producer; oil, the second or third producer at about 10 million barrels a day of the Tyumen, the Khanty-Mansi, the Tatar and the Bashkir fields and the Sakhalin shelf, the reserves of 80 billion barrels; coal of the Kuzbass and the Yakutia, the second reserves; nickel and palladium of Norilsk, the largest producer of each; diamonds of Yakutia's Alrosa, the largest producer; gold, the second producer, of Siberia and the Far East; platinum, aluminum of Rusal, iron of the Kursk anomaly, the largest deposit, copper, cobalt, uranium, the rare earths, the amber of Kaliningrad, 90% of the world's; the timber of a fifth of the world's forests; the wheat of the black earth, the largest exporter; the fish of the Pacific and the Barents; the fresh water of Baikal; the fertilizer of the potash and the ammonia, the largest exporter; the sanctions on all of it since 2022 |
| Land use | Agricultural land about 13%, the arable of 7% on the chernozem of the south and the Volga; forest about 49%, the taiga of 8 million km², the largest forest of any country and a fifth of the world's; the tundra, the swamps and the mountains the rest |
| National parks | About 70 national parks and 108 strict nature reserves, the zapovedniks of the Russian invention of 1917, on about 12% of the land — the Barguzin of 1917 on Baikal, the first; the Zabaikalsky and the Pribaikalsky of the lake; the Kronotsky of Kamchatka's Valley of Geysers; the Sikhote-Alin of the tigers and the Land of the Leopard; the Altai and the Katun; the Caucasus reserve of the bison and Sochi; the Wrangel Island of the polar bears; the Lena Pillars; the Putorana Plateau; the Kenozero, the Kizhi, the Valdai and the Losiny Ostrov of Moscow's elk; the Curonian Spit; the Russian Arctic of the Franz Josef Land; the Yugyd Va of the Komi, the largest; the Bering and the Commander Islands |
| UNESCO World Heritage | 32 — the Kremlin and Red Square (1990), the Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg (1990), Kizhi Pogost (1990), the Historic Monuments of Novgorod (1992), the Solovetsky Islands (1992), the White Monuments of Vladimir and Suzdal (1992), the Trinity Sergius Lavra (1993), the Church of the Ascension at Kolomenskoye (1994), the Virgin Komi Forests (1995), Lake Baikal (1996), the Volcanoes of Kamchatka (1996), the Golden Mountains of Altai (1998), the Western Caucasus (1999), the Ferapontov Monastery (2000), the Kazan Kremlin (2000), the Curonian Spit (2000, shared), the Central Sikhote-Alin (2001), the Citadel of Derbent (2003), the Uvs Nuur Basin (2003, shared), the Novodevichy Convent (2004), Wrangel Island (2004), the Struve Arc (2005, shared), the Historic Centre of Yaroslavl (2005), the Putorana Plateau (2010), the Lena Pillars (2012), the Bolgar Complex (2014), the Assumption Cathedral of Sviyazhsk (2017), the Churches of the Pskov School (2019), the Petroglyphs of Lake Onega and the White Sea (2021), the Kazan Astronomical Observatories (2023), the Shulgan-Tash Cave of Bashkortostan (2025) and the rest of the count of the state; no intangible list, the convention unratified |
| Administrative divisions | 83 federal subjects recognized — 21 republics of the peoples, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Chechnya, Dagestan, Sakha-Yakutia, Buryatia, Tuva, Chuvashia, Udmurtia, Mordovia, Mari El, Komi, Karelia, Kalmykia, Adygea, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia, North Ossetia, Ingushetia, Khakassia and the Altai; 9 krais; 46 oblasts; the 2 federal cities of Moscow and Saint Petersburg; the Jewish Autonomous Oblast of Birobidzhan; the 4 autonomous okrugs of the Khanty-Mansi, the Yamalo-Nenets, the Chukotka and the Nenets — and the 89 of Moscow's count with the Crimea and Sevastopol of 2014 and the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson of 2022 it does not control in full; the 8 federal districts of the presidential envoys; the governors appointed in fact and elected in form, the eleven of September 2026; the Federation Council of two from each |
People
| Population | 147,182,123 (census of 2021, with Crimea); about 146 million (2026 est.) |
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| Population density | About 8.5 per km² (22 per sq mi) — Moscow at 5,000, the European part at 27, Siberia at 3, the Chukotka at 0.07; three in four in the European quarter |
| Population growth | About −0.5% a year — 600,000 more deaths than births in 2024, the births the fewest since the 1990s, the "demographic hole" of the small generation of the 1990s, the war's dead of the hundreds of thousands and the emigration of a million since 2022 to Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Serbia, Turkey, Israel and the Emirates, the migrants of Central Asia who fill the gaps and the raids on them since Crocus; the "Year of the Family" of 2024, the abortion pressure and the childlessness fines; the projections of 130 million by 2050 |
| Median age | About 41 years |
| Life expectancy | About 73 years — 68 for men and 78 for women, the gap of the vodka and the war the widest of the world |
| Fertility rate | About 1.4 births per woman — the 1.2 of 1999, the 1.8 of 2015 of the "maternity capital" and the fall since |
| Urban population | About 75% |
| Adult literacy | About 99.7% |
| Ethnic groups | Russian 71.7% of the whole and 80.9% of those who declared by the census of 2021, the 11% who did not declare a nationality the census's gap; Tatar 3.2%, the 4.7 million of Tatarstan, Bashkortostan and the Volga, the Muslim Turkic people of Kazan; Chechen 1.1% of the 1.7 million of the two wars and of Kadyrov; Bashkir 1.1%; Chuvash 0.7%; Avar 0.7% of the Dagestani dozen with the Dargins, the Kumyks, the Lezgins and the Laks; Armenian 0.6%; Ukrainian 0.6%, the 900,000 of 2021 from the 2 million of 2010 as the war made the identity dangerous; Kazakh, Azerbaijani, Uzbek, Tajik and Kyrgyz of the migrants; the Ossetians, the Ingush, the Kabardians, the Buryats, the Yakuts, the Tuvans of the Buddhist east, the Mordvins, the Udmurts, the Mari, the Komi of the Finnic middle, the Kalmyks of the Buddhist steppe, the Germans of the Volga deported in 1941 and the 200,000 left, the Jews of the 80,000 of the million who left for Israel, the 40 "small peoples of the North" of the Nenets, the Evenks and the Chukchi; the 190 peoples of the census; the Russians the majority in most of the republics but Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, Tuva, Chuvashia, Tatarstan, Kalmykia, Kabardino-Balkaria and North Ossetia |
| Languages | Russian by 85% as the mother tongue and 99% as a language, the state language of the Constitution; Tatar by 4 million, the largest of the others, the co-official of Tatarstan; Chechen, Bashkir, Chuvash, Avar, Kabardian, Dargin, Ossetian, Yakut, Ingush, Kumyk, Lezgin, Buryat, Tuvan, Udmurt, Mari, Komi, Kalmyk of the republics' schools and the law of 2018 that made them optional; the Ukrainian of the annexed schools forbidden; English by 5% of the count, the elite's; the 100 languages of the census in the Slavic, Turkic, Caucasian, Uralic, Mongolic and Paleosiberian families, the 25 dying; the Russian Sign Language |
| Religion | Orthodox about 63% by the surveys of the 2020s and 41% of the practicing by the older count, the Russian Orthodox Church of Patriarch Kirill since 2009, the church of the state, the "holy war" of his sermons of 2022–26 and the blessing of the missiles, the Cathedral of the Armed Forces of 2020, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior blown up in 1931 and rebuilt in 2000, the monasteries of Sergiev Posad, Valaam and the Solovki, the Old Believers of the schism of 1666; Muslim about 7% by the surveys and 15 to 20 million by the estimates, the Tatars, the Bashkirs, the Chechens, the Ingush and the Dagestanis, the Sunni of the Hanafi and the Shafii, the Sufi orders of the Caucasus, the migrants of Central Asia, the mosques of Moscow of the 2 million Muslims of the capital and the four allowed; none about 15% and the "believers without religion" a quarter; Buddhist about 0.5% of Buryatia, Kalmykia and Tuva of the Gelug school of the Dalai Lama Moscow bars; Jewish of the 80,000 of the Chabad of Berel Lazar; Catholic, Lutheran of the Germans and the Finns, Baptist, Pentecostal, the Jehovah's Witnesses banned as extremist since 2017; the shamanists of Siberia and the Mari pagans; the "traditional religions" of the law of 1997 |
| Human Development Index | 0.832 (2023 data, 2025 report) — very high; about 62nd of 193 |
| The war at home | The fifth year of the "special military operation" of 24 February 2022 — the mobilization of 300,000 of 21 September 2022 and the million who fled, the "volunteers" of the signing bonuses of 2 million rubles and the regions' recruiters, the convicts of Wagner and the army, the North Koreans of Kursk; the dead and wounded of about a million by the Western estimates and the 100,000 named graves of the counts of Meduza and the BBC, the widows' payments that made the poor regions rich for a year; the censorship of the "fakes" law of 4 March 2022, the 15 years for the "discrediting," the Kruglov seven years of June 2026 for the posts on Bucha and Mariupol, the "foreign agents" of the 1,000 named and the "undesirable" of the exiled media, the Navalny of the Arctic colony dead on 16 February 2024, the Kara-Murza and Gershkovich of the swap of 1 August 2024, the "LGBT movement" extremist since 2023, the YouTube throttled and the mobile internet cut in the regions for the drones, the Telegram of the milbloggers; the Wagner mutiny of 23–24 June 2023 that reached Voronezh and the plane of Prigozhin of 23 August; the Kursk of the Ukrainian occupation of nine months; the drones of Belgorod, the refineries of the fuel queues of 2026, the airports of the "carpet" closures, the 1,600 of the election night; the "unity" of the polls and the 57.83% of the Duma; the exiles of Riga, Berlin and Tbilisi |
| Sport | Football — the World Cup of 2018 of the eleven cities and the quarterfinal lost to Croatia, the ban of FIFA and UEFA of 28 February 2022 and the World Cup of 2026 missed, the friendlies of the Gulf and the Latins, the Premier League of Zenit and Krasnodar; ice hockey of the KHL of the 2008 and the Gagarin Cup, the Olympic gold of 2018, the world championships of 27 of the Soviet and Russian count, the ban since 2022, Ovechkin of the Capitals past Gretzky's 894 on 6 April 2025; the Olympics — the 2014 of Sochi at US$50 billion, the most expensive Games, the doping of the state of the "Icarus" and the McLaren report that made the "Olympic Athletes from Russia" of 2018, the "ROC" of 2020, the fifteen neutrals of Paris 2024 and the neutrals of Milan-Cortina 2026, the ban of the Russian Olympic Committee since 2023; the chess of the FIDE flag and Nepomniachtchi; tennis of Medvedev's US Open of 2021, Rublev and the Andreeva of the top ten; the figure skating of the quadruples of the girls of Tutberidze and the Valieva case of 2022; the gymnastics; the biathlon and the cross-country of the Bolshunov; the sambo and the judo of the president's black belt; the "Games of the Future" of Kazan of 2024 and the "BRICS Games"; the bandy |
| Diaspora | About 25 to 30 million ethnic Russians and Russian speakers abroad by the Kremlin's "compatriots" count — the 8 million of Ukraine of before the war, the 3 million of Kazakhstan, the Belarusians, the Balts of the million of Latvia and Estonia and the "non-citizens," the Uzbeks, the Moldovans of Transnistria, the Israelis of the 1.2 million of the 1990s, the Germans of the 3 million of the Aussiedler, the Americans of 3 million of descent and the Brighton Beach, the Canadians, the Australians, the Argentines; the wave of 2022 of the million of Tbilisi, Yerevan, Almaty, Belgrade, Istanbul, Dubai, Bali, Buenos Aires and Berlin, the "relokanty" of the IT and the exiles of the opposition; the remittances the other way of the Central Asians of US$15 billion |
Government
| Form of government | Federal semi-presidential republic under the Constitution of 1993 — the president elected for six years, twice by the count that began again in 2020, head of state, commander in chief, the ruler by decree and the source of the law; the prime minister and the government of his appointment; the Federal Assembly of the State Duma of 450 and the Federation Council of 178 and the presidential appointees; the Constitutional Court; the Security Council of Shoigu and Medvedev; the 83 subjects and the 89 of the claim; the "managed democracy" of the four "systemic" parties that vote as one and the opposition in prison, in exile or in the ground, the "power vertical" of the appointed governors; "not free" by Freedom House, the "authoritarian" of the index, the "consolidated authoritarian regime" of the ratings; the state the exiles call a dictatorship and the Kremlin "a sovereign democracy" |
|---|---|
| President | Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (independent, of United Russia's making), since 7 May 2012 and 7 May 2000 to 7 May 2008, the acting president from 31 December 1999 and the prime minister of 1999 and 2008–12 — the fifth term from 7 May 2024, the sixth president of the Federation by the count of the terms; born 7 October 1952 at Leningrad, the law graduate of the university of 1975, the KGB officer of Dresden of 1985–90, the deputy of Mayor Sobchak of Saint Petersburg of the 1990s, the director of the FSB of 1998–99 and the prime minister of Yeltsin of 9 August 1999, the president of the second Chechen war, of the Kursk, of Nord-Ost and Beslan, of the oil boom and the "vertical," of the Georgian war of 2008, of the Crimea of 2014, of Syria of 2015, of the amendments of 2020 and of the invasion of 2022; re-elected 26 March 2000 with 53%, 14 March 2004 with 71%, 4 March 2012 with 64%, 18 March 2018 with 77% and 15–17 March 2024 with 87.28% on the record turnout of 77.49% against the three men allowed, "the most falsified election of the country's history" by the exiles' counts of the half of the votes stuffed; the ruler of twenty-six years, the longest since Stalin, eligible to 2036; the ICC warrant of 17 March 2023 for the deportation of the Ukrainian children, the first for a leader of a permanent member of the Security Council, the trips to Mongolia and the Gulf; the Anchorage of 15 August 2025 with Trump on the red carpet and the "no deal," the calls of the 28 points, the refusals of the ceasefires, the "root causes" of his every speech, the "test of strength for the political system" of the Duma election of 2026 and the "strength of Russia" of its slogan; the family the state hides, the palace of Gelendzhik of Navalny's film of 2021; the succession no one may name; the term to 7 May 2030 |
| Prime Minister | Mikhail Mishustin, since 16 January 2020 and reappointed 14 May 2024 — the head of the government of the "technocrats," born 3 March 1966 at Lobnya near Moscow, the engineer and the systems man, the head of the Federal Tax Service of 2010–20 who digitized the taxes and made the state's money flow, the prime minister who replaced Medvedev on the day of the amendments' announcement, the manager of the pandemic, the sanctions and the war economy, the "national projects," the man of the numbers who does not speak of the war; the deputy prime ministers Manturov of the industry and the arms, Novak of the energy, Golikova of the social, Khusnullin of the building, the first deputy Denis Manturov; the finance minister Anton Siluanov since 2011, the defense minister Andrei Belousov, the economist, since 12 May 2024 in place of Shoigu, the foreign minister Sergey Lavrov since 2004 and the head of United Russia's list of 2026, the central banker Elvira Nabiullina since 2013 of the key rate of 21%; the government the Duma of 2026 will confirm again |
| The 2026 Duma election | The election of the ninth State Duma of 18–20 September 2026 — the first parliamentary election of the war, the three days of the voting and the electronic vote of the regions, the slogan "Your vote is the strength of Russia," the constituencies redrawn in 2025 with seven of the 225 in the annexed Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson voting for the first time and the Crimea's rearranged; United Russia with Lavrov, Sobyanin, the war correspondent Poddubny, the children's commissioner Lvova-Belova of the ICC's warrant and the Yunarmiya's Golovin at the head of the list, Medvedev not on it, the primaries that dropped 37 deputies — 57.83% of the list by the Central Election Commission's preliminary count against 49.82% in 2021, 208 of the 225 constituencies by AP's count and about 355 seats forecast, the constitutional two-thirds kept and widened; the Communists of Zyuganov 13.67% from 18.93%, the LDPR of Slutsky 9.27% from 7.55%, A Just Russia of Mironov and New People of Nechayev the fourth and fifth of the five that returned; turnout about 57%; Yabloko, the one legal party against the war, its leader Rybakov barred for the "extremist symbols," its deputy chairman Maxim Kruglov jailed seven years on 24 June 2026 for the posts on the dead of Bucha and Mariupol, its list struck by the Supreme Court in August, its candidates in the constituencies alone; the eleven Communists of Altai arrested in the winter; the OSCE not invited for the third national vote running, "a pattern of failing to meet the commitments"; the 1,600 Ukrainian drones of the last night, 450 at Moscow, and the milbloggers' anger at the air defense; "the war did not translate into an electoral punishment of the ruling party" and "a ritual" by the readings; the new chairman of the Duma to be elected in October, Volodin the chairman of 2016–26 |
| The war on Ukraine | The "special military operation" of 24 February 2022, the invasion by 190,000 troops from the north, the east and the south after the eight years of the Donbas war of 2014 and the Crimea of 18 March 2014 — the retreat from Kyiv of April 2022 and the Bucha, Mariupol of May, the Kharkiv rout and the Kherson retreat of November 2022, the annexation of the four regions of 30 September 2022 that Russia holds in part, the Bakhmut of May 2023 and Avdiivka of February 2024, the Kursk of Ukraine's incursion of 6 August 2024 to the spring of 2025 and the North Koreans, the Pokrovsk of November 2025, the slow front of the 2026 of the drones and the glide bombs, the Oreshnik missile of 21 November 2024, the strikes on the Ukrainian grid of every winter and the Ukrainian strikes on the refineries, the ports, the airfields and Moscow, "Spiderweb" of the bombers of June 2025 and the 1,600 of September 2026; the diplomacy — the Istanbul of March 2022 abandoned, the Trump of 2025 and the call of 12 February, the energy truce of 18 March 2025 of thirty days, the Istanbul talks of May–July 2025 of the prisoner swaps, the Anchorage summit of 15 August 2025, the 28-point plan of November 2025 the Europeans rewrote, the Geneva, the Berlin and the Abu Dhabi of the winter without a text, the "frozen conflict" of the experts' 2026, the energy ceasefire Trump proposed on 14 September 2026 that Zelensky accepted and Putin refused as he refused each; the Kremlin's "root causes," "demilitarization" and "denazification" and the four regions in full; Kyiv's "not one inch" and the security guarantees; the sanctions of 20,000 and the frozen US$300 billion; the ICC; the dead of a million on the two sides by the estimates; the fifth year |
| The next election | The presidential election of March 2030, Putin eligible; the Duma of September 2031; the regional and the governors' of every September; the "single voting day" |
| The state and its parties | United Russia of 2001, the "party of power" of Putin's making and Medvedev's chairmanship since 2012, the majority of every Duma since 2003, the 324 of 2021 and the 355 of 2026, "the party of crooks and thieves" of Navalny's label; the Communist Party of Zyuganov since 1993, the "systemic opposition" that votes for the war and the second party still at 13.67%; the LDPR of the dead Zhirinovsky and of Slutsky, the nationalists of the "100 days" program; A Just Russia of Mironov, the name restored in 2025; New People of the cosmetics maker Nechayev of 2020, the "liberal" of the permitted; Yabloko of Yavlinsky's 1993, the one against the war, without a seat since 2003 and struck from the list of 2026; the "non-systemic" — Navalny's foundation "extremist" since 2021 and its leaders in exile, Navalny dead in the "Polar Wolf" colony at 47 on 16 February 2024, the epibatidine of the European finding of 2025 the Kremlin denies, Yulia Navalnaya of the exile, Kara-Murza, Yashin and Pivovarov of the swap of 2024, Khodorkovsky of London, Kasparov, the Anti-Corruption Foundation's films; the "Smart Voting" of the past and the "Noon Against Putin" of 2024; the Security Council of Shoigu the secretary since May 2024 and Medvedev the deputy of the nuclear threats; the siloviki of the FSB of Bortnikov, the National Guard of Zolotov, Kadyrov of Chechnya; Sobyanin of Moscow; the oligarchs of the sanctions and the "nationalization" of the assets; the "state of the one man" |
| Legal system | Civil law of the Napoleonic and the German models with the Soviet residue — the Constitutional Court of 11 at Saint Petersburg, the Supreme Court, the arbitrazh courts of the commerce, the jury trials of the few, the "Basmanny justice" of the political cases with the 99.5% conviction; the death penalty in the law and under the moratorium of 1996 since the Council of Europe, the Council left on 16 March 2022, the calls to restore it after Crocus; the "foreign agents" law of 2012 and 2022 of the 1,000 people and media, the "undesirable organizations" of 2015, the "fakes" and "discrediting" laws of 4 March 2022 of the 15 years, the "LGBT movement" extremist of 30 November 2023, the "gay propaganda" of 2013 and 2022, the "childfree propaganda" of 2024, the Jehovah's Witnesses extremist since 2017; the ICC unrecognized and the warrants of 2023 and 2024 for Putin, Lvova-Belova, Shoigu and Gerasimov; the prisons of the FSIN of the 400,000 and the colonies of the Arctic, the political prisoners of 1,500 by Memorial's count, Memorial dissolved in 2021 and the Nobel of 2022; the Navalny cases of 2021–24; the corruption of the "Transparency" rank of 154th |
| Regional government | The 83 subjects of the governors named by the president in practice and elected in form since 2012, the eleven elected 18–20 September 2026 with the Duma, the regional legislatures of 39 the same days, the "municipal filter" that bars the challengers; the republics of the presidents renamed "heads" but Tatarstan's "Rais"; Sobyanin's Moscow since 2010 and the sixteen constituencies; Kadyrov's Chechnya of the fiefdom, the "Kadyrovtsy" and the succession of the son; the 8 federal districts of the envoys; the occupied regions of the "governors" of Pushilin, Pasechnik, Balitsky and Saldo Moscow lists as subjects; the "regional budgets" of the war's recruits and the payments the OSW counts |
| Defense | The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation of about 1.5 million by the decree of 2024, the largest of Europe and the second of the world by the count of the state, the army of the war of the 600,000 in Ukraine, the navy of the Black Sea Fleet the Ukrainian drones drove from Sevastopol, the Northern Fleet of the submarines of Murmansk, the Pacific Fleet, the Aerospace Forces of the Su-34s and the Su-57s, the Strategic Rocket Forces of the 5,580 nuclear warheads, the largest arsenal of the world, the Sarmat, the Avangard, the Oreshnik of Dnipro of 2024 and the Poseidon, the New START expired 5 February 2026 unrenewed, the nuclear doctrine of November 2024 lowered; the defense spending of about 13 trillion rubles in 2025, 6 to 7% of GDP and a third of the budget, the first cut of the war in the 2026 budget to 12.9 trillion; the conscription of the twelve months for the 18-to-30 of the spring and the autumn drafts and the contract soldiers of the bonuses, the mobilization of 2022, the "partial" of the fear of another; the Wagner of Prigozhin of Bakhmut, the mutiny and the Africa Corps of the Sahel; the North Korean troops and the Iranian drones; the bases of Syria lost in 2024 and kept in part, Tartus and Khmeimim, the Kaliningrad, the Belarus of the Oreshnik; the Chief of Staff Gerasimov, the defense minister Belousov, the purges of the generals of 2024–25 for the bribes; the arms exports of the second seller of the world before the war and the fifth after |
| Foreign policy | The war the center of everything — the "collective West" of the enemy, NATO of the "root cause" and the Finland and Sweden of 2023–24 it produced, the Baltic front and the drones over Poland and Romania, the sabotage of the cables and the railways, the assassinations of the exiles; the United States of the Trump of the calls, of Anchorage and of the sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil of 22 October 2025, the Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of the 100% tariffs of September 2026, the New START gone, the Alaska gone, the "Bidenism" of Lavrov's complaint; the European Union of the nineteen sanctions packages, the frozen US$300 billion, the gas cut and the Nord Stream blown, the "pivot" of the Europeans Foreign Policy warned of in 2026; China of the "no-limits" partnership of 4 February 2022, the trade of US$240 billion, the oil and the Power of Siberia pipelines, the Xi of the Victory Day of 9 May 2025 and the Tianjin of September 2025, the "junior partner" of the analysts; India of the oil at the discount and the tariffs of Trump; North Korea of the treaty of 19 June 2024 and the soldiers; Iran of the drones, the treaty of January 2025 and the war of 2026 of the Khamenei dead, the oil windfall and the mediation offered; Turkey of the Erdoğan channel; the BRICS of the Kazan summit of October 2024 and the Global South of the votes; Belarus of the Union State; Kazakhstan and the Central Asians drifting; Syria of Assad in Moscow since 8 December 2024; Africa of the Wagner successors; the Arctic of the icebreakers and the claims |
| United Nations | The Soviet seat of 24 October 1945 inherited on 25 December 1991, the permanent member of the Security Council with the veto used against the Ukraine resolutions of 2022 and the Syria of the decade, the "aggressor" of the General Assembly's 141 votes of 2 March 2022 and the suspension from the Human Rights Council of 7 April 2022; the peacekeepers of the past; the UNESCO of the thirty-two; the Council of Europe left 16 March 2022 and the European Court of Human Rights gone; the Grossi of the Zaporizhzhia plant; the Lavrov of the lectures |
| Other memberships | The Commonwealth of Independent States (1991), the Collective Security Treaty Organization (1992), the Union State with Belarus (1999), the Eurasian Economic Union (2015); the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (2001); BRICS (2009) and its expansion; the G20; the WTO (2012); the Arctic Council suspended in its chair by the seven; the OSCE of the deadlock; the G8 expelled in 2014; the Council of Europe left in 2022; the OPEC+ of the oil cuts with Saudi Arabia; the International Olympic Committee's ban of 2023; the "Games of the Future" |
Economy
| GDP (nominal) | About US$2.2 trillion (2025, IMF) — the eleventh economy of the world at the market rate and the fourth by purchasing power at about US$7 trillion |
|---|---|
| GDP per capita | About US$15,000 (2025) |
| GDP per capita (PPP) | About US$50,000 (2025) |
| GDP growth | About 4.3% in 2024 of the war spending and the last of the "wartime growth spurt," about 1% in 2025 and the stagnation of 2026 — the contraction of 0.3% of the first quarter, the forecasts cut to 0.5 to 0.7% by the Moscow analysts, the investment down 14.3% in the first quarter, the "unfolding recession" the Petersburg forum of June 2026 would not name; inflation of 9.5% in 2024 cut below 6% in 2025 by the key rate of 21% of October 2024 to June 2025 and the slow cuts since, the fuel of the burning refineries and the VAT of 22% of 1 January 2026 pushing it back; the ruble at about 80 to the dollar, strengthened 45% in 2025 and expected to weaken toward 95 by 2027 on the ministry's own forecast; the deficit of 2.6% of GDP in 2025, "five times the plan," and the record of 2026, the National Wealth Fund drawn down; the labor shortage of 2 million and the wages of the arms plants; the unemployment of 2%, the lowest ever; the sanctions of 20,000 and the "shadow fleet"; the "stability" the price |
| Economy by sector | Services about 56%, the state, the trade, the transport and the finance; industry about 33%, the oil and gas of 15 to 20% of GDP and a third of the budget, the arms of the war's boom, the metals, the chemicals and the machines; agriculture about 4%, the grain of the black earth |
| Currency | Russian ruble (RUB) |
| Oil and gas | The oil of about 10 million barrels a day, the second or third producer with the United States and Saudi Arabia, Rosneft of Sechin, Lukoil, Gazprom Neft, Surgutneftegas and Tatneft, the exports of 7 million barrels of crude and products to China, India and Turkey since the Europe of 2022 closed, the price cap of US$60 of the G7 of December 2022 cut to US$47.60 in September 2025, the "shadow fleet" of the 1,000 old tankers of the Baltic and the Black Sea the Europeans board, the American sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil of 22 October 2025, the Urals discount, the Iran war of 2026 that lifted the price and the drones of Ukraine that cut the output, the refineries of Ryazan, Novoshakhtinsk, Tuapse and the Volga hit and the gasoline export ban; the gas of Gazprom of the largest reserves, the exports to Europe of 155 billion cubic meters of 2021 cut to the Turkish stream and the LNG, the Nord Stream blown on 26 September 2022, the Ukrainian transit ended 1 January 2025, the Power of Siberia to China of 38 billion and the Power of Siberia 2 agreed in September 2025 for the 2030s, the Yamal LNG and the Arctic LNG 2 of Novatek under sanction; the revenue of the state of a third from the two and falling |
| Grain, metals and the rest | The wheat of the largest exporter of the world, 40 to 50 million tons a year of the black earth of the Kuban, the Don and the Volga, the "grain diplomacy" of Africa and the Black Sea corridor of 2022–23; the sunflower oil, the barley, the fertilizer of the largest exporter of Uralkali, PhosAgro and the ammonia; the metals of Norilsk Nickel's nickel and palladium, Rusal's aluminum, Severstal, NLMK and Evraz of the steel, Alrosa's diamonds sanctioned by the G7 in 2024, Polyus of the gold the central bank buys; the arms of Rostec of Chemezov, the tanks of Uralvagonzavod, the Su-57s, the Kalibrs and the Shaheds made at Alabuga, the exports fallen; the IT of Yandex sold to the state's friends, the VK, the Kaspersky, the "import substitution" of the Chinese cars that took the market from the Western brands that left, the Lada of AvtoVAZ, the McDonald's of "Vkusno i tochka"; the Sberbank of Gref, the VTB, the Moscow Exchange without the foreigners; exports of about US$400 billion and imports of US$280 billion, China at 40% of the trade |
| The sanctions | The most sanctioned country of the world — more than 20,000 designations since 2022 by the United States, the European Union, Britain, Japan, Canada, Australia and Switzerland, the central bank's US$300 billion frozen, the SWIFT cut of the banks, the oil embargo and the price cap, the technology and the dual-use, the airspace closed and the Aeroflot fleet of the leased planes kept, the Visa and Mastercard gone, the 1,000 Western companies left and the assets "temporarily managed" by the state's friends, the nineteen packages of the Union, the diamonds, the LNG transshipment, the shadow fleet of the 500 tankers listed; the American sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil of October 2025 and the Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of September 2026 of the 100% tariffs on the buyers of the oil "an unfriendly act" of the Kremlin's word; the evasion of the "parallel imports" of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Turkey and the Emirates, the yuan of the trade, the Mir cards of the home; the economy that "adapted" and the stagnation of 2026 |
| The war economy | The defense and security spending of 40% of the federal budget in 2025, 13 trillion rubles of the arms, the soldiers' pay and the widows' payments, the "military Keynesianism" of the growth of 2023–24 of the three shifts of Uralvagonzavod and the wages of the poor regions doubled, the first cut of 2026; the taxes of the war — the profit tax to 25% of 2025, the progressive income tax of 13 to 22% of 2025, the VAT from 20 to 22% on 1 January 2026 and the threshold cut to 10 million rubles, the "windfall" levies, the levy on the electronics; the deficit of 5.7 trillion rubles of 2025 and the record of 2026 financed by the domestic bonds and the fund; the June 2026 law that lets the government exceed the spending cap and the debt ceiling without the Duma; the "guns and butter" of Putin's 2024 and the National Projects 2.2 of December 2025; the "economic mobilization" of the analysts' fear |
| Public finances | Public debt about 20% of GDP, among the lowest of the large economies, the domestic OFZ bonds the banks are made to buy at the yields of 15%; the National Wealth Fund of the liquid US$40 billion left of the US$110 billion of 2022; the reserves of US$700 billion of which US$300 billion frozen abroad; the budget of 44 trillion rubles of 2026 on the oil at US$59 and the ruble at 92 the plan assumed and the year broke; the oil and gas revenue down a quarter in 2025; the regional budgets of the 66% in deficit; the pension age raised in 2018 to 65 and 60 and the pensions of 40 million; the "budget rule" suspended; the ratings withdrawn |
| Income classification | High income (World Bank) since 2024 by the war spending's arithmetic |
Transport & infrastructure
| Main airports | Moscow Sheremetyevo, about 45 million passengers, the hub of Aeroflot, Domodedovo taken by the state in 2025 and Vnukovo, the three of the capital closed for hours and days by the drones of 2025–26 under the "Carpet" plan; Saint Petersburg Pulkovo; Sochi of the resort and the war's traffic, the southern airports of Krasnodar, Rostov and the Crimea closed since February 2022 and Krasnodar reopened in 2025; Novosibirsk Tolmachevo, Yekaterinburg Koltsovo, Kazan, Vladivostok; the 230 airports of the country and the 1,000 of the Soviet count |
|---|---|
| Airlines | Aeroflot, the state carrier of 1923, one of the oldest airlines of the world, the 350 aircraft of the group with Rossiya and Pobeda, the Airbuses and Boeings of the Western leases seized in 2022 and re-registered, the parts of the smuggling and the cannibalization, the Superjets and the MC-21 of the substitution delayed; S7 of Novosibirsk, Ural Airlines of the Urals, UTair, Nordwind, Red Wings, Azimuth of Rostov; the airspace of Europe and North America closed since 2022 and the flights of Istanbul, Dubai, Beijing and Delhi; the Ilyushin and Tupolev revival |
| Main ports | Novorossiysk, the largest, of the oil of the Caspian pipeline and the grain, the drones and the sea drones of the Black Sea; Saint Petersburg, Primorsk of the oil and Ust-Luga of the coal and the shadow fleet on the Baltic; Murmansk of the ice-free Arctic and the Northern Fleet, Archangel of the White Sea; Vladivostok, Nakhodka and Vostochny of the Pacific and the Chinese trade; Sabetta of the Yamal LNG; Taman, Tuapse; Sevastopol of the fleet that fled to Novorossiysk; Kaliningrad; the Northern Sea Route of the 38 million tons of 2024 and the nuclear icebreakers of Rosatom, the only fleet of them; the Volga–Don and the Volga–Baltic canals of the river ships; the Kerch bridge of 2018 attacked in October 2022 and July 2023 |
| Railways | About 87,000 km (54,000 mi) of the broad gauge of 1,520 mm, the third-longest network of the world and the busiest for freight after China and the United States, the Russian Railways of the state — the Trans-Siberian of 9,289 km from Moscow to Vladivostok since 1916, the longest railway line of the world of the seven days and the eight time zones, the Baikal–Amur Mainline of the Soviet 1980s and the expansion for the China coal; the Sapsan of 250 km/h between Moscow and Saint Petersburg since 2009 and the Lastochka, the high-speed line of the two capitals of 400 km/h building since 2024 for 2028 on the "Russian" trains; the Moscow Metro of 15 May 1935 of the 270 stations and the palaces of the marble, the busiest of Europe with 7 million a day, the Moscow Central Circle and Diameters; the metros of Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Nizhny, Samara, Yekaterinburg, Kazan; the sabotage of the lines of 2022–26; the trains to the front; the Crimea by the bridge |
| Roads | About 1.5 million km (930,000 mi), about 70% paved and the rest of the "two misfortunes, the fools and the roads" — the M-4 "Don" to the south, the M-11 "Neva" to Saint Petersburg, the M-12 "Vostok" of Moscow to Kazan of 2023 extended to Yekaterinburg and Tyumen, the M-10, the M-7 "Volga," the R-297 "Amur" of the Chita–Khabarovsk gap closed in 2010 that let a car drive from the Baltic to the Pacific, the Kolyma highway of the bones; the driving on the right and the Japanese right-hand-drive of the Far East; the Chinese cars of the market of 2023–26; the winter roads of the ice of Siberia; the 14,000 road deaths a year from the 35,000 of 2007; the platon tolls |
| The Trans-Siberian and the north | The Trans-Siberian of the seven days and the Rossiya train, the Golden Eagle of the tourists gone; the Baikal of the Circum-Baikal railway and the ice of March; the Kamchatka of the helicopters to the geysers; the Northern Sea Route of the summer convoys; the Kolyma and the Chukotka of the winter roads; the Volga cruises; the Kizhi and the Solovki by boat; the Elbrus cable cars; the Golden Ring of the churches; the Sochi of the Olympic road |
History in dates
| 862 | Rurik at Novgorod |
|---|---|
| 882 | Kyiv — the Rus' |
| 988 | The baptism of Vladimir |
| 1147 | Moscow first mentioned |
| 1240 | The Mongols take Kyiv; the yoke |
| 1380 | Kulikovo, 8 September |
| 1480 | The Ugra — the yoke ends |
| 1547 | Ivan IV crowned Tsar, 16 January |
| 1613 | Michael Romanov, 21 February |
| 1703 | Saint Petersburg founded, 27 May |
| 1721 | The Empire — Peter the Great |
| 1812 | Borodino, 7 September; Moscow burns |
| 1861 | The serfs freed, 3 March |
| 1867 | Alaska sold, 30 March |
| 1905 | Bloody Sunday, 22 January |
| 1917 | The tsar abdicates, 15 March; the Bolsheviks, 7 November |
| 1918 | The Romanovs shot, 17 July; the civil war |
| 1922 | The USSR, 30 December |
| 1924 | Lenin dies, 21 January |
| 1937 | The Great Terror |
| 1941 | Barbarossa, 22 June |
| 1943 | Stalingrad, 2 February |
| 1945 | Victory, 9 May |
| 1953 | Stalin dies, 5 March |
| 1957 | Sputnik, 4 October |
| 1961 | Gagarin, 12 April |
| 1979 | Afghanistan, 24 December |
| 1985 | Gorbachev, 11 March |
| 1986 | Chernobyl, 26 April |
| 1991 | The coup, 19–21 August; the USSR ends, 25 December |
| 1993 | The White House shelled, 4 October; the Constitution, 12 December |
| 1994 | Chechnya, 11 December |
| 1998 | The default, 17 August |
| 1999 | Putin prime minister, 9 August; acting president, 31 December |
| 2000 | Putin elected, 26 March; the Kursk, 12 August |
| 2004 | Beslan, 1–3 September |
| 2008 | Georgia, August |
| 2014 | Sochi, February; Crimea, 18 March; MH17, 17 July |
| 2015 | Nemtsov shot, 27 February; Syria, 30 September |
| 2018 | The World Cup; Putin's fourth term |
| 2020 | The amendments, 1 July; Navalny poisoned, 20 August |
| 2022 | The invasion, 24 February; the mobilization, 21 September; the annexations, 30 September |
| 2023 | The ICC warrant, 17 March; the Wagner mutiny, 23–24 June; Prigozhin killed, 23 August |
| 2024 | Navalny dies, 16 February; the fifth term, 15–17 March; Crocus, 22 March; Kursk invaded, 6 August; the Oreshnik, 21 November |
| 2025 | The Trump call, 12 February; the energy truce, 18 March; Xi at the parade, 9 May; the Kamchatka quake, 30 July; Anchorage, 15 August; the Rosneft sanctions, 22 October; the 28 points, November |
| 2026 | The VAT at 22%, 1 January; the first quarter shrinks; the election called, 16 June; Kruglov jailed, 24 June; Yabloko barred, August; the energy ceasefire refused, 14 September; the Duma election, 18–20 September; the 1,600 drones, 19–20 September |
Records & firsts
| The largest country | 17.1 million km², 11% of the land |
|---|---|
| The most time zones | Eleven |
| The deepest lake | Baikal, 1,642 m |
| The longest railway | The Trans-Siberian, 9,289 km |
| The coldest inhabited place | Oymyakon, −67.8°C |
| The largest forest | The taiga, a fifth of the world's |
| The largest gas reserves | 47 trillion cubic meters |
| The largest wheat exporter | 40 to 50 million tons |
| The largest nuclear arsenal | About 5,580 warheads |
| The first satellite and the first man in space | 1957 and 1961 |
| The largest city of Europe | Moscow |
| The most sanctioned country | More than 20,000 |
| The longest ruler since Stalin | Putin, 26 years |
| The first ICC warrant for a P5 leader | 17 March 2023 |
Frequently asked questions
What is the official name of Russia?
The Russian Federation — Rossiyskaya Federatsiya — and Russia, "Rossiya," the Constitution of 1993 making the two names equal: the state that succeeded the Soviet Union on 25 December 1991 and took its seat at the United Nations, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic of 1917–91 before that, the Empire that Peter the Great proclaimed in 1721, the Tsardom of Ivan the Terrible of 1547 and the Grand Duchy of Moscow that gathered the lands after the Mongols. The name is the Rus' of the Viking traders and rulers whom the Slavs of the Dnieper and the Volkhov called by that word in the 800s, "Rus'" the land of Kyiv and Novgorod, "Rossiya" the Greek form the Muscovites took in the 1500s to claim all of it; Ukraine and Belarus share the root and dispute the inheritance.
What is the capital of Russia?
Moscow — Moskva, the town on the river of that name first written of in 1147 by Yuri Dolgoruky, the seat of the grand dukes that gathered the Russian lands, the Third Rome of the tsars until Peter moved the capital to his new city in 1712, and the capital again from 12 March 1918 when Lenin brought the government back behind the Kremlin walls — about 13 million people in the city and 21 million in the metropolis, the largest city of Europe, the Kremlin and Red Square of the World Heritage, Saint Basil's, the Bolshoi, the Metro of the palaces, the seven Stalin skyscrapers and the towers of Moskva-City, the city the Ukrainian drones reached in the hundreds in September 2026 and the Crocus gunmen in March 2024. Saint Petersburg, the imperial capital of 1712–1918 and the second city of 5.6 million, Novosibirsk of Siberia, Yekaterinburg of the Urals, Kazan of the Tatars, Nizhny Novgorod, Chelyabinsk, Samara, Omsk, Rostov and Vladivostok on the Pacific follow.
How big is Russia, and how many people live there?
About 17,098,242 km² (6,601,665 sq mi) — the largest country on earth by far, an eighth of the inhabited land, nearly twice Canada, spanning eleven time zones from Kaliningrad on the Baltic to the Chukotka across the strait from Alaska, fourteen neighbors along 22,408 km of border, the Arctic coast the longest of any state, the Urals dividing the European quarter where three Russians in four live from the Siberian three-quarters of the taiga, the tundra and the permafrost. The census of 2021 counted 147,182,123 people, the count that included Crimea, and the statistics service estimates about 146 million in 2026 within those borders, the ninth-most populous country and falling by half a million a year on the deaths above the births, the war's dead and the emigration of a million since 2022 — 72 percent Russian by the declarations, the Tatars, Chechens, Bashkirs, Chuvash and the 190 peoples of the census the rest.
What are the highest and lowest points of Russia?
Elbrus, 5,642 m (18,510 ft), the twin-summited extinct volcano of the Caucasus in Kabardino-Balkaria, the highest mountain of Europe by the geographers who put the continent's edge on the Caucasus watershed, first climbed in 1874; and the shore of the Caspian Sea at Astrakhan and Dagestan, 28 m (92 ft) below the level of the oceans, the largest lake of the world. Between them Russia holds Baikal, the deepest lake on earth at 1,642 m and the largest by volume with a fifth of the world's unfrozen fresh water, the Volga, the longest river of Europe at 3,531 km, the Ob, the Yenisei and the Lena of Siberia among the ten longest of the world, the Kamchatka volcanoes, the Urals, the Altai, the Kola's deepest hole ever drilled and Oymyakon, the coldest inhabited place, at −67.8°C.
What currency does Russia use?
The Russian ruble (ISO code RUB, ₽), of 100 kopeks, the oldest currency name in use in Europe, from the "cut" silver of the Novgorod of the 1200s, the ruble of the tsars, the Soviets and the Federation, redenominated a thousand to one on 1 January 1998 after the inflation of the 1990s and shaken by the default of that August, issued by the Bank of Russia — the currency of the sanctions since 2022, cut from the Western clearing, at about 80 to the U.S. dollar in 2026 after the swing from 60 to 120 of the war's first year, held up by the capital controls, the exports and the key rate the central bank took to 21 percent in 2024 and cut only slowly; the "Mir" cards of the home market since Visa and Mastercard left. Clocks keep eleven zones from UTC+2 to UTC+12, Moscow at UTC+3 all year; Russia drives on the right, with the right-hand-drive Japanese cars of the Far East.
Who governs Russia?
President Vladimir Putin, head of state since 7 May 2012 and before that from 2000 to 2008, the prime minister in between, the ruler of Russia for twenty-six years and the longest since Stalin, elected to a fifth term on 15 to 17 March 2024 with 87.28 percent in a vote without opponents, eligible under the amendments of 2020 to run again in 2030 and to sit until 2036, the commander of the war on Ukraine in its fifth year, wanted by the International Criminal Court since March 2023 for the deportation of Ukrainian children; his prime minister since 2020 is Mikhail Mishustin, the tax administrator, and his party, United Russia, has just taken 58 percent of the list vote and about 355 of the 450 seats in the State Duma election of 18 to 20 September 2026, the first parliamentary election of the war, held without the OSCE's observers, with the anti-war Yabloko struck from the ballot and with 1,600 Ukrainian drones over Moscow on the final night. There is no succession, no ceasefire and no opposition that can stand for office; the Kremlin calls the result "the strength of Russia" and the exiles call the election a ritual.
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